2016 IC Awareness Month Campaign Kicks Off

How Patients Can Be Involved In IC Awareness Month –

Every September, IC patients around the world unite to raise awareness about interstitial cystitis, bladder pain syndrome, hypersensitive bladder syndrome and chronic pelvic pain. All IC patients, support group leaders and national organizations are invited to participate! Your voice counts! Here’s how you can participate:

Spread the word through social networking

Write a few sentences or even a story about IC Awareness Month on your blog or “what’s on your mind statement.” Every day in September, share our IC Daily Fact from our website!

Get politically active

Encourage your local, regional and national politicians to pass a proclamation to honor IC Awareness Month. To make this easy for you, use the letter we’ve placed on the campaign website. Learn more here!

Send out our press release

Send our press release to your local and regional paper, asking if they would do a story about IC and IC Awareness Month. The press love personal, local stories. Share a few paragraphs about your life with IC in your community, as well as any obstacles you have faced with finding doctors, getting pain care and/or the public perception of bladder diseases.

Educate your doctors

Bring an IC Awareness Month poster (which you can print from our website) and our free IC Fact Sheets to each of your physicians and nursing staff to place in their offices and waiting rooms. Share the latest IC articles with your physicians. We have a variety of handouts on our website!

Make a donation

Make a donation directly to an IC research center. We support Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak Michigan for their cutting edge IC studies.

Mobilize your support group

If you’re in a support group, ask them to participate in IC Awareness Month. They should have a meeting in September and, if possible, send out our press release. You could do an activity, a bake sale, garage sale to raise money for research. You could organize a walk for awareness or approach a local TV station and ask for a story on IC. The sky is the limit. Dare to be bold! If there is no support group in your area, consider starting a new group to provide support and build friendships among patients who often feel very isolated and alone. If you need help, give us a call at: 1-800-928-7496!

2016 Medical Care Provider Of The Year Award!

Nominate Your Urologists, Urogynecologists and Physical Therapists!

Do you have a doctor or physical therapist who treats you wonderfully? Each year, we want to encourage and acknowledge clinical care providers who provide excellent care for IC and pelvic pain patients. This includes urologists, OB-GYNs, physical therapists, nutritionists, pain specialists and so forth. These are the medical care providers who:

listen to their patients

who take the time to answer questions

who explain treatment choices carefully and thoughtfully

who treat patients and family members with dignity and respect

who give their patients hope and encouragement

It’s about time that we publicly recognize those few medical professionals who really do treat IC patients with compassion and kindness!

IC Awareness Month Contests

#1 – Poster Contest

Bring out your inner artist and create a poster for IC Awareness Month sharing your own interpretation of #lifewithic. Light or dark, floral or portrait, encouraging & hopeful or a message about how IC has changed your life, every patient poster tells an important story that helps spread the word about IC. We welcome all mediums, electronic or in print. All ages are welcome! All posters will be added to our websit!

#2 – Meme Contest

Funny, irreverent, witty, bold and often ridiculous, meme’s make a statement. A funny or shocking meme can be shared thousands of times across the internet where they could inspire patients to actually google IC. Last year, we had dozens of funny, irreverent and powerful memes that truly made an impact. They were shared thousands of times across the internet and were a big part of our IC Awareness Month campaign.

How Can I Make A Meme?

Several websites offer free meme making services. You can pick your favorite picture, add text and then share it with your friends. Here are some services that we like!

If another person tells me to drink cranberry juice, I might scream! #lifewithic

New this year, we’re using Twitter to share the story of IC. When something happens, good or bad, funny or infuriating, we hope you’ll tweet it using the hashtag #lifewithic. We’ll be searching twitter for the right hashtags to determine the winner!

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

My Google Profile+ Jill Heidi Osborne is the president and founder of the Interstitial Cystitis Network, a health education company dedicated to interstitial cystitis, bladder pain syndrome and other pelvic pain disorders.
As the editor and lead author of the ICN and the IC Optimist magazine, Jill is proud of the academic recognition that her website has achieved. The University of London rated the ICN as the top IC website for accuracy, credibility, readability and quality. (Int Urogynecol J - April 2013). Harvard Medical School rated both Medscape and the ICN as the top two websites dedicated to IC. (Urology - Sept 11). Jill currently serves on the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Panel (US Army) where she collaborates with researchers to evaluate new IC research studies for possible funding. Jill has conducted and/or collaborates on a variety of IC research studies on new therapeutics, pain care, sexuality, the use of medical marijuana, menopause and the cost of treatments, shining a light on issues that influence patient quality of life.
An IC support group leader and national spokesperson for the past 20 years, she has represented the IC community on radio, TV shows, at medical conferences. She has written hundreds of articles on IC and its related conditions.
With a Bachelors Degree in Pharmacology and a Masters in Psychology, Jill was named Presidential Management Intern (aka Fellowship) while in graduate school. (She was unable to earn her PhD due to the onset of her IC.) She spends the majority of her time providing WELLNESS COACHING for patients in need and developing new, internet based educational and support tools for IC patients, including the “Living with IC” video series currently on YouTube and the ICN Food List smartphone app! Jill was diagnosed with IC at the age of 32 but first showed symptoms at the age of 12.

Interstitial Cystitis Network

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the IC Network than ever but advertising revenues across health media websites are falling fast. We haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our web site and support services as open as we can. The IC Network's independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to help you find relief.

If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $25, you can support the IC Network – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

The ICN is a health education company dedicated to IC and chronic pelvic pain syndrome. Rated the top patient website dedicated to IC in peer reviewed studies by Harvard (2011) and the Univ. of London (2013), our goal is to empower, educate and encourage patients and providers!